The FIIE, the ARD committee and the 15th school day: what Texas adds to IDEA

Texas’s laws, rule by rule

1. The ARD committee

   19 TAC 89.1050(a); TEC 29.005(b-1)

   Each student evaluated or served gets an admission, review, and dismissal committee, “the individualized education program (IEP) team” of federal law.

   Your IEP team has a Texas name; its paperwork records whether you agreed.

2. Eligibility and age range

   19 TAC 89.1040(a), (b); 89.1035(a)

   The ARD committee rules on eligibility under the federal definition plus Texas’s own criteria per category, on a “multidisciplinary team” evaluation.

   A student aged twenty-one on September 1 keeps services that year; visual or hearing impairment is served from birth.

3. The written request

   TEC 29.004(c); 19 TAC 89.1011(b)

   Addressed to the special education director “or to a district administrative employee, such as a campus principal,” a request draws consent papers or a refusal.

   A spoken request starts no clock, so put the words on paper and keep the date.

4. The FIIE and the ARD’s clock

   TEC 29.004(a); 19 TAC 89.1011(d), (g), (h)

   The FIIE report is due by the forty-fifth school day after written consent, stretched by absences; the ARD then decides within thirty calendar days.

   Summer days are not school days; the report reaches you five school days before the ARD.

5. Notice, meetings and disagreement

   19 TAC 89.1050(d), (g); 89.1055(p)(1)

   Five school days of prior written notice precede any proposal or refusal, and a parent who disagrees at the ARD gets “a single opportunity to recess and reconvene.”

   The reconvened ARD lands within ten school days; the IEP states your disagreement’s basis.

6. Restraint notice and TEA’s disputes

   19 TAC 89.1053(e), 89.1151(b), (c), 89.1195(e)(4)

   Written notice of any restraint reaches you within one school day; TEA resolves a signed complaint in sixty calendar days and takes hearing requests for two years.

   Hearings are “a one-tier system,” so no district-level hearing comes before TEA’s.

What the rule says

The state wrote it this way:

“… the district shall, not later than the 15th school day after the date the district receives the request … provide an opportunity … to give written consent for the evaluation; or … refuse to provide the evaluation …”

Texas Education Code 29.004(c)

Only a written request to an administrator starts it, and school days stop when summer starts.

The deadlines Texas sets

School days and calendar days count differently, so read the unit in every row.

How a child gets an IEP in Texas

1. One letter, one addressee

   Request a full individual and initial evaluation by name, in writing to the campus principal.

2. Consent to the FIIE

   The answer brings the consent form and TEA’s Overview of Special Education for Parents.

3. Take your seat at the ARD

   As a committee member you read the FIIE, and the IEP is reached by agreement.

The evaluation request letter writes step one for you, in the words a district answers.

TEA special education dispute resolution — The agency in Austin takes special education complaints, assigns mediators and holds the hearings.

If the school says no

Refusal here is prior written notice with safeguards attached; nothing by day fifteen is a missed date.

• Tell the principal which day your letter landed and ask for the answer the fifteenth school day owed.
• At the ARD, disagree on the record and take the recess the rule offers.

A refusal arrives in writing under 34 CFR 300.503, naming what was refused and the data behind it.

This page organizes the state’s own words: it does not replace the current rule text, or advice from someone qualified in your state.

Where this comes from

• Texas Education Code chapter 29, Subchapter ASection 29.004, quoted above.
• 19 TAC Chapter 89, Subchapter AAThe commissioner’s rules.
• TEA special education dispute resolutionWhere a complaint goes.
• The federal evaluation rule (34 CFR 300.301)The floor every state builds on.